Gallo Be Thy Name

The Inside Story of How One Family Rose to Dominate the U.S. Wine Market

By: Jerome Tuccille

Narrated by: Grainger Hines

Rising from hardscrabble poverty in the early 1900s, the Gallo family used hard work, cunning, and crime to become the largest, most influential winemakers in the world.

Gallo Be Thy Name is the portrait of an American dynasty, chronicling the family's history from Prohibition and the Great Depression to its roots in organized crime, its impact on the roiling farm labor movements of the 60s and 70s, and ultimately to its domination of America's wine market. The Gallos rode the turbulent currents of history to triumph, with iconic brothers Ernest and Julio steering the ship. But beneath the carefully polished surface of E. & J. Gallo Winery is a sweeping story of passion and power — swirling with rumors of murder.

©2009 Jerome Tuccille (P)2009 Phoenix Books, Inc.

An informative read. Big bite of US history.

Forget the negative reviews. This was quite an interesting story, a big bite of US history for the last century, because the Gallo Wine Company went from nothing to being currently, the biggest winemaker in the world. The narration was, in my opinion, well done, but a bit slow. If your player can adjust speed, set it at approximately 1.15 times the normal speed and the story moves quite well.

Resident of Modesto verified authenticity of book.

All was good, I lived through the era of the younger son trying to get his independence and to make his own mark, you presented very well. Thank you.

Great story, poorly written and narrated

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The book feels very disjointed for the first 1/3 or so of the story, making it difficult to keep up with who the characters are because you haven't spent enough time with any one before the discussion turns to another.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narration was pretty poor. Mispronunciations all over the place were the biggest issue.

Was Gallo Be Thy Name worth the listening time?

If you enjoy stories about wine families, as I do, the story itself warrants a listen. You simply need to be prepared to be a little lost at the beginning and ignore all of the wine-related mispronunciations provided by the narrator.

A Fascinating Story

This story definitely holds the reader's interest! Wow! Unfortunately, the presentation left a lot to be desired. Apparently, this was the first time the narrator had seen the book, because his intonation was often out of sync with the events he was reading about, and the individuals he was quoting. It would have been nice if someone familiar with northern and central California, and wine-making for that matter, had coached him a bit, because he mispronounced and misread names of towns and other fairly common words. All in all, the mistakes were distracting. Still, I couldn't stop listening. Quite a story!

Mispronunciations

The author of the book has to be very dissatisfied with the number of repeated mispronounced words. Was a little distracting. I guess it’s an old recording. The story was interesting. An update might be interesting.